


Leavetaking

by CelestiaTrollworth



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate ending for ST 2009, Gen, Really Seriously AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 18:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6126619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestiaTrollworth/pseuds/CelestiaTrollworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was no leavetaking scene after the movies, and the absence thereof made me think of alternate universes in which the situation might come up. For instance, a widowed preacher almost getting his son back after the American Civil War...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leavetaking

The spring rains that had rolled over the dry Kansas prairie had left so little rain that the grass was once again baked harsh brown that June. “Take some oats, if nothing else,” the preacher said, holding out two bags to them. “There won't be much grazing unless you stick right by the rivers.”

“That we will.” His son twisted the feed sack and hung it from his saddle horn while his companion waited, already sitting his horse. Both of them had brought home their cavalry mounts and the rifles they had carried at the last; it was the fastest way for a young man to get a start out west. The horses were well fed and still used to long days, and the rifles had become an extension of their bodies.

This was the last day. This morning, he had held some small hope that the boys would decide against the long, uncertain ride southwest to Texas, but he had arisen to find John standing in the doorway of the new raw lumber house, already looking away from the sunrise toward the new land.

He shouldn't have had to find new land. He should have inherited the shop in the little town where the preacher had grown up and come to a comfortable manhood and married the Shawnee girl who had gotten away from the walk to Oklahoma. They had but the one child, and if people were outwardly kind to the preacher's son, every small indiscretion had someone muttering “Half-breed!” until the preacher had begun to wonder whether there might be some truth to it. When the President called for young men, of course John had gone. “Nobody wants me here,” he had said.

“But I want you here!--oh, but I wouldn't have you thought a coward,” his mother sighed, because her people were warriors and sent their young men away regularly. The preacher's people pretended not to be warriors, but their young men went anyway, the way John did.

“Be a man, my son,” was all he had said that day. Should he have, could he have said more?

The girl had been everything to him, and when the fever took her he had planted her rosebush on her grave in the churchyard. Then there was the war, and the raiders came through, and there wasn't even enough of town left to see where the church or the cemetery had been for sure. He thought he knew where her grave had been, but after so many raids and burnings even the prairie was changed. If the grave had been left, if there had been even that much, would John have come home to him?

He had come back from the war, and that should have been good enough. So many other fathers had nothing but a headstone over an empty spot that he knew he shouldn't question the wisdom of the Almighty. John had even come home whole, not missing an arm or leg or eye, and able to talk, and not eaten up by morphine or drink. Eaten up, though, he was. There had been a gulf between them even before, and four years apart had widened it even if the past three days had pulled much of it together. What was left was too much ever to bridge. Other than the distance on the night of the raid, the preacher had never heard shots fired in anger, while the boy had heard very little else in four years. He'd killed men, he'd come near being killed, and his friend Jim all but had been.

 _If you would stay_ , he wanted to say, _maybe we could put most of it right_ ; at the same time, he knew it wouldn't ever be all the way right again. “Your mother would be proud of you.”

“Did what I had to,” John replied, and turned back to the little ceremonies of checking the girths and making sure all the little lashings held the bedroll and feed bag.

The preacher handed up the feed bag to Jim and offered a handshake. “I know he's in good hands.”

“I like to think so. We heard there'd be work driving cattle once the railroad comes this way. Pick them up in Texas, drop them off where the railhead will be in Abilene.”

“Well, when you're nearby, don't be a stranger.”

“We won't be. And if things go how we want, eventually, we'll make a place for you. That Creek girl he knows,” Jim added, “she has some land from her family.”

“She hasn't said yes yet,” John reminded him. “When she does, we'll write.” He held out a hand to the preacher. One handclasp for all time to come, perhaps? But there was no more he could say this time. That chance had gone years ago.

“Safe trip, however long it is,” the preacher said, letting go of him. John swung up to the saddle the way all the cavalry did, light and easy and part of the horse. He hadn't been half a cavalryman, or half a soldier. The preacher laid a hand to the horse's shoulder. “May the God you don't believe in take care of you anyhow.”

That almost got a smile out of John. He tipped his hat and let the horse start ambling west, falling in half a step behind Jim's little bay.

The preacher watched them for a little while and went into the new building that might, if anyone came back, soon be a church. He busied himself for a while with the benches and whitewash, then on a whim went back out to see the two dots in the western distance. “Always did love you, boy,” he said, and went back in. When he left at the end of his tasks, the sun was sinking over the horizon and he could find no trace of them.


End file.
